An infamous reverend?

St Vedast, Foster Lane

The church St Gregory in Fledborough, a hamlet by the banks of the River Trent seems a world away from our family's roots in southern and eastern England, and yet my journey back through time on the Sherwood branch of my father's side of the family has led me to this quiet backwater on the Nottinghamshire/Lincolnshire border. The vicar of this remote parish was Reverend William Sweetapple, my 7x great-grandfather.

William, the son of John Sweetapple, and his wife, Amy; was born in London on 28th March 1688 and baptised at St Vedast, Foster Lane on 10th April. The church survived the Great Fire, but the damage sustained during the disaster was severe enough for repairs to be carried out between 1695 and 1701. Brother John born a year later and sister Amy the following year.During his childhood he would have witnessed the nearby edifice of St Paul's Cathedral slowly rising from the ashes of the fire to be completed in 1708

William was admitted to Balliol College, Oxford on 21st June 1705. He graduated in 1709 with a BA, but stayed on at Oxford and graduated with an MA on 16th January 1712 at the age of 23. His career in the church began later that year when he was ordained as a deacon at Christchurch cathedral, Oxford on 16th May. Six weeks later, on 29th June, he was at Bishopsthorpe Palace in York being ordained as a priest and he was appointed as the rector of Fledborough.

Family tree from great-grandmother, Charlotte Sherwood, back to to William Sweetapple

Fledborough's population of just 60 people meant he would have to wait until 1715 before performing his first marriages at the parish church of St Gregory. Two more marriages took place in 1717, and then on 23rd June 1721 his own marriage, to Elizabeth Chapman, took place there.

Their first son, William was born in 1724, but sadly died at the age of 2. He was buried in the churchyard on 13th 1726. That same year, they had a daughter, Amy and in the years that followed they had 3 more children; Elizabeth (1729), Edward (1731), Caroline (1733) and John.

His father died in 1727 and may have received a substantial inheritance. That same year he took local landowner and nobleman Evelyn Pierrepont, 2nd Duke of Kingston, to court in a dispute over tithes, glebe land and right of common. The action, brought at Serjeant's Inn in London's Fleet Street, succeeded and he was permitted to assert his right to the glebe land and right of common.

Legal action at Serjeant's Inn

Between his marriage and his death in 1755, Rev. Sweetapple performed a further 8 marriages for which the banns had been called conventionally in church, but during this period he also solemnised an astounding 488 marriages by means of licences which he had issued himself, having been empowered by the bishop to issue surrogate ecclesiastical marriage licences in 1728. As you can imagine, this ruffled a few feathers in within the church establishment. Writing in 1950, Frank West, the Archdeacon of Newark said ‘gradually it became known that in this snug little hamlet on the banks of the Trent, an ideal spot for a clandestine marriage, there was an obliging parson who would grant a licence without asking awkward questions at the rectory one moment, and perform the marriage ceremony in the church at the bottom of his garden ten minutes later…From Bawtry to Bingham and from Mansfield to Newark, every apprentice who was plotting to run away with his master’s daughter, every reckless young scapegrace who had persuaded an heiress to elope with him knew that he would find a willing accomplice in the…rascally Mr Sweetapple’.

Despite the accusations, research shows the truth may have been somewhat more prosaic. It is true that several spouses came from considerable distances to marry in Fledborough, such as William Belyeat from the Isle of Ely; Robert Slainey, a widowed brick-maker, from Bolsover; Francis Spencer, a joiner, from York, Lydia Style from Buckinghamshire and Anne Calvert from Doncaster. However, these were the exceptions. 33% of grooms and 38% of brides came from within five miles of Fledborough, and only 4% of grooms and 3% of brides originated from more than twenty miles distant. The average ages at which the licensees married was also fairly typical for the period, being 26 for men and 24 for women, so it was not the case that only young people were flocking to Fledborough. There were also relatively few of the gentry, and at the opposite end of the social spectrum, few labouring people – the majority of his clients appear to have been relatively local, middling farmers, tradesmen and craftsmen. Interestingly, there were 4 mariners, 2 ferrymen, a bargeman, a waterman, and a sea-captain, pointing to Fledborough’s location near the River Trent.

The marriages solemnised by Rev. Sweetapple were ‘clandestine’ in the strictest sense of the word, in that they probably breached aspects of matrimonial law, particularly the canon which stated that either the husband or wife should live in the parish where the wedding took place. The marriages he performed by licence infringed these rules, but the ecclesiastical authorities must have turned a ‘blind eye’ to his activities and he was never accused of malpractice.

The reason so many people went to the considerable trouble of marrying at Fledborough remains an enigma. Sweetapple may have a had a reputation for being more accomodating, or he may have charged less for the licence, but Outhwaite concludes that ‘it may also be the case that the chief attraction was Fledborough's relative isolation: it was off the beaten track. If privacy was the quality licence seekers most desired, then this lowly populated Trent-side parish could certainly offer it’. It's not clear how Sweetapple himself benefited. He died a relatively wealthy man and in his will left £500 and silver to his daughter Elizabeth, £200 and more silver to his daughter Caroline, silver to his son John and land to his son Edward and smaller monetary gifts to his son-in-law and grand-daughter.

Sweetapple died in 1755, the year after the surrogate power to issue ecclesiastical marriage licences had been withdrawn. He and his wife are buried in the church.

St Gregory, Fledborough, Nottinghamshire